Chapter 30

Pyre stood across from Kesh the following day, Balefor not far from him, both turned toward the bard. Rather than go to the mansion last night, Pyre had headed back to his room, where he had thought about Kesh’s Harmony Domain until he finally fell asleep, exhaustion pulling him under before the questions stopped circling.

How do I deal with a Domain like Harmony?

The solution he had come up with—one he had turned over for hours, rejected, and then returned to again and again—was about to be tested.

Pyre’s broken black blade appeared in his hand, fire shrieking up its length. Kesh has already proven that he can stop us in our tracks; Balefor only broke through yesterday by chance, Pyre thought. So let’s do this…

The idea was one of the strangest he had ever entertained, and that alone should have been reason enough to discard it. He had tried to discard it, but every other approach he came up with felt either obvious or futile.

This one refused to stay buried.

In front of him now, Kesh seemed more in tune with reality, with dormant Anima itself, than either Pyre or Balefor. His Harmony didn’t dominate space—it aligned with it and perhaps redirected it, smoothing into something cooperative.

Pyre stepped back, deliberately giving ground, allowing Balefor to take the opening shots. The lion-man surged forward with practiced confidence, greataxe flashing, pressure radiating off him in waves. Pyre didn’t move to join him, didn’t even raise his blade.

Instead, he pulled the fire closer.

The flames tightened around the broken sword, drawn inward rather than flaring outward. Heat washed over him instantly—real heat, not the distant warmth he had grown used to. It bit at his palms, crawled up his arms. The Sigil protested, whispering, pulsing, trying to shed the excess energy.

Pyre ignored it.

Pain sharpened his awareness and his heartbeat thundered in his ears, fast and heavy. He blinked against the distortion in his vision, the fire now close enough to disrupt his sight entirely as smoke curled upward, blurring the world.

Balefor fell back in his periphery, knocked aside by a soundwave Pyre barely registered.

That was the moment he locked in.

Pyre stopped trying to track the battle happening before him and instead focused on the brutal, simple cadence of his own heart.

Thump, thump, step. Thump, thump, strike.

Every movement aligned to that rhythm, every step landed on the offbeat, and every strike followed the pulse. The sound attacks hit, but they no longer disrupted him.

The timing allowed Pyre to slip past Harmony’s influence, irregular, violent, unsympathetic as he continued forward. He cut through the space between them in a rapid succession of strikes, fire surging not outward but forward, compressed and furious.

Kesh’s notes faltered, suddenly misaligned as Pyre’s blade struck his Sigil and the lute flashed and vanished.

A sphere of fire erupted around them, roaring outward before collapsing in on itself. When it cleared, Kesh was on the ground, robes scorched, breath steady but eyes wide.

Pyre stood over him, broken sword pointed at the bard, chest heaving.

“What have you done?” Kesh asked, surprised and yet still calm.

“Whatever it is, it worked,” Balefor said. He turned to Pyre, mane flaring slightly, eyes narrowing. “What do you know that we don’t know?”

“I know everything that you know,” Pyre said. “It’s just how I’m applying it.”

Balefor grunted. “Care to explain what the hell that means?”

“He’s referring to knowing your Domains,” Sister Halcyon said as she stepped up to the platform. “I’ll take it from here, Pyre.”

Pyre moved aside and offered Kesh a hand. The bard took it, hauling himself to his feet with a laugh that sounded more impressed than wounded.

“You will very quickly know your opponent’s Sigil,” Sister Halcyon explained. “They will conjure it, and whether it’s a weapon or a crown, like Lyra had. You will see it, and there are combat strategies that follow, most of which I don’t need to teach you all because you all have this training. Your opponent’s Domain is different. Here, we all know each other’s Domains—or at least you all do. You do not know mine.”

“So knowing a person’s Domain allows us to better handle their Sigil,” Balefor said, the concept dawning on him.

“Yes, if you’re so lucky. Hiding one’s Domain is common, especially once a soul reaches the Ascendant stage and has two Sigils. Let me say it like this: in the kinds of battles you all may find yourselves in, it will be nearly impossible to know your opponent’s Domain, simply because there can be so many opponents. But if you are lucky enough to know, one strategy is using their own Domain against them. This is what Pyre was doing yesterday to you, Balefor.” She turned her gaze. “And to you just now, Kesh.”

“Ah, clever!” The bard grinned at Pyre. “I hadn’t thought of that.” His smile darkened to some degree. “My poor, poor Pyre. You do know that it will be easy to toy with Defiance, right?”

“Yes,” Balefor said, a cunning look crossing his face. “Very easy.”

Pyre glanced between the two of them, his posture tightening.

“Good. Then you all understand each other now,” Sister Halcyon said. “We will continue with this strategy in mind. And note—your response to how someone interprets your Domain is a practice in and of itself. Start again.”

She stepped off the platform as both Balefor and Kesh turned toward Pyre.

What followed wasn’t strategy so much as instinct.

Pyre moved first, trying to keep both men in front of him, refusing to settle into a single rhythm. Yet as he soon found out, two opponents changed everything. As Harmony and Conquest pressed from opposite sides, Pyre learned just how difficult it was to maintain control without burning himself out.

He went down. He forced himself up. A blow sent him skidding aside. Pyre recovered. He went down again. He rose again. Another strike tore him from his footing.

Pyre never let his guard down, and his Sigil never wobbled, but it was clear as he took hit after hit that something was going to have to give.

By the time Sister Halcyon called them off for the day, the world felt like it was closing in around him. His entire body burned, not with fire but with exhaustion. His vision blistered at the edges, colors bleeding together.

“We will head to the Font now,” Sister Halcyon announced.

It took Pyre a moment to register the words.

His sword had already vanished, yet the heat lingered in his bones, a tremor that would not quite settle. He tried to step forward and nearly didn’t make it. The platform felt unsteady beneath his boots, as if it were gently tilting, and he had to drop to one knee before the world finished slipping sideways.

Pyre could feel a fraying sensation along his nerves, a thinning that made his limbs seem both heavy and unreal. A low, persistent tingling crawled through his hands and forearms, refusing to fade.

He sat back on the stone, breathing slowly, eyes half-lidded.

Kesh lowered himself beside Pyre, robes brushing the platform. “Want me to play something that will soothe you?”

“Soothe me, or put me to sleep?” Pyre asked as he looked up at the bard, whose form had started to double.

“Soothe,” Kesh assured him, summoning his lute.

He didn’t play loudly, didn’t even seem to strike the strings so much as brush them. The sound that followed was barely music at all, more like a remembered melody, something Pyre had once heard from far away.

The tension in his chest loosened first, then the sharp edge of awareness dulled, the ringing in his ears fading to a manageable hush as the heat in his veins receded, his thoughts slowing, unspooling into something quieter, steadier.

By the time Kesh let the final note fade, Pyre was on his feet.

“Thanks,” he told the bard.

“Any time.”

They followed Sister Halcyon through the streets of Aevum, and Pyre noticed immediately that something had changed.

The city was more active than it had been any previous day. Groups of robed figures clustered in the squares, speaking in hushed but urgent tones.

Strange instruments had been erected near balconies and open plazas—metal frameworks strung with glowing threads, crystal lenses turning slowly on their own. Some were aimed upward, toward the marbled sky of distant realms. Others were pointed outward, toward the darker reaches beyond the city.

It certainly is active, Pyre thought as they moved past a square where three figures traced Sigils in the air while another recorded the movements with a hovering device.

They reached the Font of Eternity and the activity intensified.

Lines had formed, longer than before, souls standing in quiet determination before the Long Walk. Pyre watched one woman step onto the bridge, her posture rigid, her gaze fixed forward.

For a moment, Marrowsven came to mind.

She must have been desperate, Pyre thought. And then the realization settled in, heavy and undeniable. That’s why the Shepherd sits there. Not to watch the Font—but to intercept the ones who were about to break.

After Sister Halcyon’s brief instructions, they took their places around the Font.

Pyre lowered himself into a seated position, hands resting loosely on his knees, and closed his eyes.

The Font’s pressure rolled over him, familiar now.

As his Anima began to refill, he let his thoughts drift back to the fight—to the way his Defiance had refused to let him fall, long after caution and sense had vanished. He felt a sharp stab of embarrassment at the memory. Not because he had pushed himself, but because he hadn’t noticed when pushing had shifted into recklessness.

Next time, he told himself, I’ll be aware of it.

When Pyre finally opened his eyes, the people before the Font had thinned. Kesh remained seated, deep in meditation, his expression serene. Balefor stood several paces away, watching the Font with his arms crossed, mane stirring faintly in the unseen current of power.

Pyre rose and joined the lion-man.

“Good, you’re finished,” Balefor said, his gaze fixed on the souls lined up for the Long Walk. He turned to Pyre. “I’m ready.”

“Ready?”

“I’ve decided to take you up on your offer. I’d like to see this manor. Could we go there now?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Good.”

Pyre glanced toward Kesh. “What about him?”

“I’ve tried to gently nudge him out of his meditation. He seems to be deeper than ever.”

Pyre studied Kesh more closely. He still maintained his smile, yet dried tears now marked his cheeks.

“Maybe we leave him for now,” Pyre said at last.

“Yes, perhaps that’s better.” Balefor looked around, taking in the gathering souls, the hum of activity around the Font of Eternity, the subtle tension that now underlay everything. “So, the manor—how do we get there?”

Pyre turned east, already feeling the familiar pull of the road that led past the Hollow. “This way.”